


Wasn’t Expecting That

by JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Eric copes with Jack's death, M/M, Sad, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-12-06 21:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18225707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle/pseuds/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle
Summary: Eric reflects on his life with Jack after Jack dies. It's sad, but it was a good life.





	Wasn’t Expecting That

**Author's Note:**

> Based on Jamie Lawson's song ["Wasn't Expecting That."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-lI_tgQMMk)  
> This is not beta'd, which means I'm counting on y'all to to let me know if I need to fix something!

Eric opened the fridge and closed it again.

There was no way he could fit anything else in there. The containers were stacked on every shelf, all the way back. Except for the bottom shelf, which held water and few bottles of Shitty’s preferred beer.

The beer that Shitty had looked at and smiled. He opened one bottle. When Eric cleaned up after, he found the bottle half-full in the living room. Well. None of them could drink like they used to.

Eric remembered Shitty shotgunning cheap beer with him on the morning of Spring C, drinking like it would never catch up to them. He supposed it never did, if he didn’t count getting so drunk Jack had to carry him home with only one shoe on.

That was before. Before everything. Almost.

It was before the kiss, the one he wasn’t expecting, the one he never would have had the courage to initiate. Jack, for all his anxiety, had always been the brave one.

Eric -- Bitty, then, to all his friends and, startlingly, to Jack -- had fully expected to see his friendship with Jack fade over the months ahead, maybe even a couple of years, if he was lucky to bask in Jack’s glow until he graduated. But sooner or later he would just be someone Jack used to know, someone that maybe Jack would offer tickets to if he managed to get word that he’d be in Providence for a game; maybe, if Jack was in a good mood and they won, go out for a beer (water for Jack) after.

Eric walked through the living room, straightening pillows and turning off lamps. He wasn’t sure why they were on in the first place; it wouldn’t be dark for another hour yet. The sun stayed up quite late in mid-May. It was 50 years ago, almost to the day, that Jack had kissed him that first time. Kissed him and left him, late for a meeting that marked his transition for college student to NHL player, the face of the Providence Falconers.

It wasn’t like Eric could have stayed either. He was cutting it close to make the shuttle to the airport. But he’d been so mixed up that day, elated that Jack had kissed him, had _wanted_ to kiss him; afraid that it was a goodbye kiss, that Jack had decided this was something he couldn’t have; wondering if this would make things so awkward that they wouldn’t even be able to maintain the limited kind of friendship Eric had hoped for.

Jack soon put those fears to rest. Eric remembered their desperation to find ways to be alone that summer when Jack visited for the first time, stealthy hands sneaking into shorts and kissing hard enough to muffle any sounds.

The boys had moved the dining room table back into place, Eric saw, and Sadie had run the vacuum cleaner. They were good kids. Well. Not really kids anymore. Michael and Sadie had kids of their own, and Daniel looked like he was getting serious with Fatima. 

Funny how Mama and Coach hadn’t picked up on the way he and Jack were all over each other that visit. Maybe Moomaw was right all those years ago: People didn’t see what they weren’t looking for. Too late to ask any of them about it now.

Eric wandered back into the den and picked up the photo of Jack and him exchanging their wedding vows from the end table, intending to straighten it, make it visible from his favorite seat on the couch again. Now the couch was back, but the room still seemed empty without the hospital bed and all the paraphernalia that went with it. 

Before putting the picture down, Eric noticed all the fingerprints on the glass. The people who came over must have been looking at it, passing it around. He carried it with him back to the kitchen, in search of a cloth and glass cleaner. He had to see Jack clearly, see the pink in his cheeks and the determined look in his eyes captured by the photographer as he promised to love, honor and cherish Eric as long as they lived. Well, he had done that. 

Eric hadn’t cried at the wedding. Jack’s eyes had been dry and his voice steady while he recited his vows, but he teared up when Eric made the same promises back to him, and Eric heard a very definite sniffle. Eric almost -- almost -- chirped him for it, but it was their wedding, and he didn’t want to embarrass Jack. Later, he asked Jack why he cried then, and Jack told him, “I don’t think I can ever deserve you, but I’m so happy you’re mine.”

Eric thought that was bunk; if anyone was undeserving, it was Eric. But Jack had been right about one thing: Eric was his. All his. For all he was out and proud, he’d never so much as kissed a man (romantically, at least -- he still kissed his grown-up boys, still told them he loved them) other than Jack. Hadn’t really had eyes for anyone else since he was nineteen.

Seventy might he a bit late to enter the dating pool, even though Jack had chirped him about it, once it became clear that Jack wasn’t going to make it.

“You’re still a catch,” Jack said. “Still beautiful, and now you’re rich too.”

“I married well,” Eric said.

“You did,” Jack agreed. “But not as well as I did.”

Eric disagreed, but he didn’t say so. It was an old discussion. Argument, maybe, even, but never heated. Jack had played a solid twelve years, all with the Falconers, before deciding to retire before his body gave out and made the decision for him. Eric’s career had been taking off then, with his first cooking show on TV instead of the internet, and his second cookbook coming out that year. After that, Jack had stayed home and been the primary caregiver first for Michael, then for Daniel and Sadie.

There had been some rough years with the Falcs, when new ownership wanted to change the image from being “the gay team,” even though by then there were maybe a dozen out players spread across the league. Eric was glad that didn’t last but five or six years, and then another set of new owners embraced Jack as the legend he was.

Through it all, they had never wanted for money. The thing was, Eric knew that much of his success was based on his ability to take risks and to hold out for what he wanted, knowing he had Jack behind him. What would have happened to him if he’d had to take the first job he was offered out of college, just to pay off student loans and make rent on a crappy little studio somewhere? 

He wondered how many of the casseroles in the fridge were based on his own recipes. He wondered if he would be able to tell if he tried them. Maybe tomorrow he could divide them up among the kids rather than tossing them.

He hadn’t cried at the memorial service either, or when he called the kids to let them know their Papa had passed.

His tears, shed with his face pushed into his pillow so as not to make a sound, had come after Jack took the first opioid pain killer, something akin to OxyContin, the nurse said.

Eric had been glad, because Jack was in so much pain. It was etched in his face and in his wasted muscles and Eric could hear it in his voice, even when he laughed. But when Jack let them give him addictive pain meds that last time in the hospital, Eric knew. Jack wasn’t going to make a miraculous recovery from the cancer this time the way he had before.

The drugs at least let him sleep.

It was only a few days later that Jack came home, into the hospital bed in the den, with a hospice nurse visiting every few days and an aide to help Eric care for Jack from eight to four every day.

He was doing well, the hospice nurse said. He was still taking the pain meds, but he was lucid for at least a few hours a day, and they were talking about getting a wheelchair so Eric could take him out on the deck when it was warm enough.

The kids all came in, and brought the grandkids, and Shitty and Lardo and Tater came by. But there were supposed to be weeks left yet, weeks for the rest of their SMH teams, and the Falconers Jack played with, and their friends from Providence’s food community …

Then one night, Jack had called for Eric, who was sleeping on the couch in the den. Eric sat up next to his bed, and held his hand, and listened as Jack talked about how he fell in love with Eric without even realizing it, over checking practice and pie lessons. Eric wasn’t sure if Jack was with him in the present or in the past, but he listened and he soothed and remembered the sun filtering through the flour in the air after Jack dusted his face in the Haus kitchen.

Jack had fallen into a fitful sleep, and in the morning he was gone.

Eric hadn’t cried just then, not until he called the hospice nurse and the undertaker and the kids. Then he’d sat Jack’s bedside and said goodbye until they came to take him away.

Only when the house was empty did he let himself cry. He cried as he made the dough for pie crust, as he peeled the apples and mixed the filling, as he wove the lattice and sprinkled maple sugar on top. He cried as it baked in the oven. Then, when the timer went off, he stopped.

That pie, and the rest of the ones he had made for the service, were long gone now. Now all he had was a refrigerator full of casseroles of dubious quality. No, he couldn’t give those to the kids.

He went into the kitchen and pulled out the eggs, some cheese and some vegetables. If nothing else, he could make an omelet for dinner.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard) or [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/justlookfrightened)!


End file.
